


Where are you?

by Melarissa



Series: I'm translating myself [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Amputation, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dramedy, Explicit Language, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Missing Scene, Non-Graphic Violence, Original Character(s), Post-Canon, Romance, WTF Winter Soldier 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 08:34:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20255242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melarissa/pseuds/Melarissa
Summary: Winter Soldier was roughfly punished once...





	Where are you?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thefilthiestpiglet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefilthiestpiglet/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Art Prompt: missing bits](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20212372) by [thefilthiestpiglet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefilthiestpiglet/pseuds/thefilthiestpiglet). 

> I don’t know who brought the beautiful art from thefilthiestpiglet into our chat, but this story was born thanks to this picture. Dear thefilthiestpiglet, our little fellowship of HTP-addicted Winter Soldier and Stucky fans from Russian fandom likes and appreciates your work. Thank you for inspiration!
> 
> This is my translation of my own fanfic "Где же ты?", so I want thank Jasherk and thefilthiestpiglet for beta-reading. All mistakes are mine. If somebody want to help me correct my text, you're welcome!

Nobody took Dr. Lowell seriously: he was small, with a whisp of gray curly hair around a pink bald spot, always smiling and helpful. He specialized in orthopedics, and his favorite therapy subjects were soldiers of elite units. They liked him too, grateful for the anatomic insoles and belts. But now Dr. Lowell didn't seem nice at all. His wrinkled face was flushed with indignation while he quickly trotted down the corridor, clutching a thick orthopedic atlas in his hands. He burst into the locker room, where Alpha group just changed after a shower, happy about the completed mission. Wet, hot steam was crawling from the open door to the bathroom.

“Who did it?” the doctor exclaimed in a falsetto as soon as he entered. No one heard him over the noise and laughter. But the doctor raised his voice, attracting the attention, and not gave up and retreated, as usual: “I asked you: who did it?”, he literally shrieked. “Who came up with this brilliant idea?”

Everyone looked around. The doctor looked like a militant sparrow who decided to fight a pack of feral cats . Someone even giggled.

“Doc, what are you talking about?” Willis, huge and massive as a bear, roared. He always had a soft spot for the doctor ever since he relieved him of his chronic back pain.

“I mean, who cut Asset's toe off?”, the doctor whistled.

The answer was a cheerful snort. It seems that the team was aware of the loss of the Asset's big toe and was not concerned. The group commander, Perkins, raised his hand becalming, smiling broadly.

“Don't make a fuss, doc,” he said. “What's the matter? The Asset heals like a dog.”

Squinting, as if looking into the scope, Lowell jumped forward and punched the thick orthopedic atlas in Perkins' bare stomach with all his strength. Then again and again, while everyone stood dumbfounded and their cute doc Lowell was beating the commander of an elite S.T.R.I.K.E. unit. Willis had to literally carry the doctor into a corner as he continued to shout vague threats. Perkins looked no longer complacent, he covered the injured stomach with his hand and grinned at the doctor, no longer friendly.

“Doc, are you out of your mind?”, Perkins roared. “A little piece is off. Your Asset is out of control! It's toe may grow back.” 

“Yeah, sure…”, Lowell exclaimed, trying unsuccessfully to get out of the “embrace” of Willis. “What do you understand? Stabilization of the foot! Load balancing! Ligaments! The entire anatomy of the foot skeleton! How will it run? Yes, I have to make special shoes for it now. And no guarantees... Complicated bone structure cannot be restored! Where did this idea come from?” 

“What was I supposed to do?” Perkins shouted out. “It's a fucking weapon! It needs to act and not to talk! I almost lost two men through its fault. And then it didn't want to obey, and started to contradict us! This toe, it was nothing, oh, please! Next time I'll cut something more substantial!”

“Don't!”, Lowell shrieked. “Don't you dare to cut anything more from the Asset! Don't touch one hair on it's head! It's the most complex structure, it's all... the most wonderful algorithm that you can imagine! And your... crude interventions... spoil everything. It's on you to imagine better ways to hold it under control! Fuck him in the ass if you want, but don't cut anything off!”

At the last exclamation, the soldiers responded with laughter. The likelihood of fucking the Asset and staying alive to tell the tale seemed more fantastical than promising apple trees on Mars next year. The doctor deflated.

“Doc, I'm sorry,” softly growled Willis, and combined with his appearance it sounded more like a threat to life. “We won't do it again. Maybe you can make a rubber toe for it. They had made and put the whole arm on it.”

Shaking his head and muttering curses, Lowell, out of breath, turned from Willis, who no longer held him, and headed to the door. Before leaving, he cast a glance at the naked soldiers standing with towels in their hands, spat on the floor and left. The forgotten atlas lay on the floor.

“To fuck the Asset”, muttered one of the men, when the door was closed. “I’d like to keep my dick. It probably has teeth in its ass.”

If Steve could, he would draw Bucky's entire body inch by inch. He would make a detailed map, all the hollows and bulges, every mole, every hair. Here would be the picturesque Interscapular plain, the gorgeous Clavicular ridges, wonderful Popliteal hollows. And separately there would be traces of human intervention in an ideal ecosystem: the destruction around the prosthesis, a lot of round and elongated scars all over the body. Special signs, visual reminders of the past. Bucky's lying on a blanket under a tree. He's wet, water droplets on his skin after a swim have not quite dried up. Legs bent at the knees, the flesh hand under his head, a book in the metal one. The sun shines on him through the leaves, and the shadows in Bucky's body are like leopard's spots. Steve's eyes slide from his shoulders to the sunken line of the abdomen, from the thigh up to the knee, acutely delineates the contours of the knee and slips over the leg down. Bucky's ankles are narrow, like a ballet dancer’s. Round ankle bones are like lollipops. Thin strips of ligaments extend to each of the four toes. Instead of the fifth — knotty, uneven scars. Whenever Steve sees these scars, a wave of bitterness rises inside him. He can understand the prosthesis, but the toe weren't lost in combat. It was punishment. How can somebody punish someone by cutting his toe off? In enlightened, modern America?

Steve’s hand reaches for the thick sketchbook that he constantly carries with him. There are whole pages of drawings of the body parts of Bucky: Bucky's hand, Bucky's neck, Bucky's shoulders, his feet, his heels, his buttocks. In this sketchbook is the whole body from Bucky, from dozens of different angles. If Steve had been a sculptor, he could have sculpted him to the smallest detail.

When Steve starts scribbling with a pencil, Bucky casts at him a curious glance from behind the book for a second and focuses on reading again. Steve draws the contours, outlines the frame, as if a skeleton of the future drawing. Time after time, he looks up, comparing his sketch and the original.

“Don't move your toes,” he asks. Bucky stops. He glances again from behind the book. He understands which toe Steve is talking about and what Steve is drawing. And hides quickly his mutilated foot under the thigh of the other leg.

“No,” he says. “Don't, Steve.”

Steve stops. He puts a pencil between the pages of the sketchbook and closes it. Puts them aside. He doesn't know exactly how Bucky lost his toe. He doesn't need to. He doesn't say a word as he gets closer to him. Nobody is around there, they are alone on this tiny patch of grass near the Potomac river. But even if there would be a crowd around, Steve would do what he had planned, because Bucky's nothing to be ashamed of. Absolutely. Steve settles in front of him on his knees, sits back on his heels, and then pulls gently at the hidden leg. Bucky struggles a little at first, but finally gives up with a light sigh. Steve puts his foot on his thigh. He gently passes his fingertips along the shin, from knee to ankle, ruffling barely noticeable hairs. After he gets to the ankle, he wraps both hands around Bucky's heel and caresses the bones with his thumbs. Then his hands slide to his toes, long, straight, aristocratically elegant. Steve wraps his arms around the arch of Bucky's foot and pulls his leg up until it's near his lips. Bucky watches him with big, frightened eyes. He trusts Steve, for sure, but sometimes he just doesn't know how to deal with his inner anxiety. Steve sees his lips curl bitterly. He leans over his foot and hums, almost touching the tip of his big toe with his lips: “Daddy finger, Daddy finger, where are you? Here I am, here I am, how do you do?” 

Bucky obviously wasn’t expecting that. And he's certainly not ready for Steve pressing his lips to his big toe when he's finished singing the first verse. But Steve won't let up, and he doesn't care how stupid it looks.

“Mommy finger, Mommy finger, where are you?”

Steve sings and then kisses the second toe, then the third and fourth. When he finally gets to the fifth, Bucky's tense again. “Baby finger, Baby finger,” Steve almost whispers, “here you are…” He kisses right in the middle of the jagged circle of connective tissue growing over the wound. Kisses time after time, even licks with the tip of his tongue. And when it was clear that the completely stunned Bucky wasn’t expecting anything bad, pulls with his whole force at his ankle, so Bucky is sliding to him and over his lap and firmly presses him to himself. “You're here,” he whispers. “You're here, and that's what matters.”


End file.
